Lord Phillips, Supreme Court president, to retire early

The President of the Supreme Court, Lord Phillips, has announced he is to retire earlier than planned.He was due to retire in January 2013, but has decided to step down at the end of the legal year, 30 September 2012, instead.Lord Phillips said this was so he could make an "orderly hand-over" to his successor during the summer holidays.He said he had "greatly enjoyed the challenge" of presiding over the Supreme Court.The Lord Chancellor was informed by Lord Phillips last week of his decision.The process to appoint his successor will begin in the new year.Lord Phillips was the first person to be the president of the Supreme Court.Housed at Middlesex Guildhall, it was set up in 2009 and replaced the Law Lords. The aim was to emphasise the separation between Parliament's lawmakers and the judges charged with overseeing legislation.In an interview with the BBC earlier this year, Lord Phillips said he was often kept awake in the middle of the night trying to grapple with some of the court's complicated legal issues.He said: "It depends how much pressure I am under but I very often start my day at 5am... Sometimes I wake up even earlier."Today I woke up about 3am and got up and worked for a bit and went back to bed and got up again about 5am."These are intellectual problems, not stressing problems. Nonetheless if you are concentrating very hard on a particular conundrum it doesn't go away, so you have a few hours sleep which you need and then the problem takes over again."Lord Phillips became a lawyer in 1962 and became a Judge of the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, in 1987.He was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1995 and became a Law Lord in 1999.In June 2000, he was appointed Master of the Rolls and was then appointed Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales in October 2005.He became Senior Law Lord in October 2008 and was knighted by the Queen in April 2011.